Notes from the Stone Barn

Ideas of Love

Sometimes you have to put one foot in front of the other and keep walking, that’s what Albert told me. It was during a time when I couldn’t get out of bed. That’s how it was for many years. I wanted to die. Because I should have been the one who did. It made perfect sense. Over and over in my head, I thought it. The only part I couldn’t figure out was how to exchange my life for Peggy’s now that time continued to move forward. I wished it could loop back, just for a few weeks, loop back and give me another chance. I belonged on that floor in the dorm with that shotgun shell in fragments in my chest. I was the one who had brought Shin into Peggy and Erin’s lives because I had wanted Jaesun for myself. Even after Namjoon died, I’d thought only of him. I was the one who hadn’t protected my friends. I despised myself, the most for how hard I fought Shin to stay alive that day.

None of this I could explain to anyone, least of all to Albert who consoled me for years, sitting with his head in his hands, urging me to live again. It was Albert who never gave up on me. He called every day, wrote me letters, sent me music, drove each weekend to my house and talked and talked, weeks and months. One of those talks led finally to a walk outside and then down the street and a ride in a car, and I remember feeling coming back into my limbs again.

It wasn’t a straight path, that getting out of bed and walking outside to that car. I remember feeling the wind hit my face in January, two years after Peggy’s death, and being startled by how it swept itself like a veil and my hands like someone else’s hands attempted to rip it away.  Another time returning to the house a car came close, making me stumble, the snow drifts the plows had made on the side of the road having narrowed the road considerably. Albert cursed at the driver. I thought the next one, the next one that comes I wouldn’t move out of the way but take a step toward the center. But no car came.  Each time it took Albert’s coaxing to get me outside again.

He didn’t talk about the past. It was all about him acting as if nothing had happened out of the ordinary, as if we were two people talking about music and the weather, and the future. He always talked about the future until I could see it too, a future that put the events of that day in December behind us rather than a memory that is relived every single moment in the present as if each time I could do something to make it end differently but I never can. I owe my life now to him. I owe him my life and so much more.

Yesterday, I met Albert at Arrabiata for lunch, near his office. It’s a restaurant we both like and they just put the tables back out on the sidewalk. He and his wife have a one year old named Tabitha. Albert had insisted on seeing me even though I told him I understood how busy he was as a new father. When I arrived, he had a cranberry soda ready for me on the table and a bourbon for himself which surprised me. “Done for the day?” I asked after he kissed me hello.

“How are you feeling? Are you feeling okay? I ordered the mixed greens for us to split, yes?”

“As usual,” I said. “I feel as fine as I can, considering.”

“Well, I know how it is with you pregnant people—always changing your mind about food.”

“True enough. I’m going to break with tradition and get the giant plate of Bolognese,” I answered. “My baby’s a meat eater, for sure,” I added, patting my stomach.

Albert smiled before he finished his drink. I waited.

Finally, he said, “Brian doesn’t think it’s useful at this point, but I told him I was going to tell you and he went along with it. I think it’s the only way we can move forward.”

Brian is his therapist. Albert’s been in therapy with him for the last year. His wife has been instrumental in that, one of many reasons that I like her very much. She’s been good for him. Someone who didn’t look at the past before now, he’s been eager to make up for lost time. The timing is perfect. What I needed from him back then is different from what I need now. I can handle the past now, maybe, but I’m cautious. Brian’s been helping Albert and I don’t want it to stop him now.

“Don’t tell me if he doesn’t think it’ll help you,” I replied.

 A waiter arrived just then and Albert gave him our orders, before turning to me. “Yoonhee,” he says. “I should have told you right away. I meant to tell you. It’s why I went to your house at first to see you, right after, in December, I mean. I’d hoped to talk to Erin first but she hasn’t returned my calls, in all these years, she still refuses any contact.”

Erin had ignored my attempts to reach out to her too, but I remembered the look on her face in the room when Peggy died. She can’t forgive me for bringing Shin into our lives and I don’t blame her. “In that room that day, what Erin and I saw isn’t easily forgotten, Albert. But you didn’t have anything to do with it so she should see you, I mean, unless she knows about us. Maybe she holds that against you, that we’re friends.”

“This is hard for me to admit,” he said, and downed the rest of his wine.

I don’t know what he wants to say but I can see that he’s upset. “You don’t have to do this now.”

“I saw Shin the day it happened, before he went to your room. In front of Mesa.” Albert’s voice wavered. It was loud in parts and softer in parts. He was struggling to speak. Was that all? That he saw Shin on that day? I’m relieved. “You couldn’t have known what he was going to do. No one could.”

“There’s more.”